d in front of
the tall, forbidding tenement and looked up at the narrow, grimy
windows. It seemed almost incredible that handsome, fastidious Jay
Gardiner would even come to such a place, let alone fall in love with an
inmate of it.

"The girl must be a coarse, ill-bred working-girl," she told herself,
"no matter how pretty her face may be."

A number of fleshy, ill-clad women, holding still more poorly clad,
fretful children, sat on the door-step, hung out of the open windows and
over the balusters, gossiping and slandering their neighbors quite as
energetically as the petted wives of the Four Hundred on the fashionable
avenues do.

Sally took all this in with a disgusted glance; but lifting her dainty,
lace-trimmed linen skirts, she advanced boldly.

"I am in search of a basket-maker who lives somewhere in this vicinity,"
said Sally. "Could you tell me if he lives here?"

"He lives right here," spoke up one of the women. "David Moore is out,
so is the elderly woman who is staying with him; but Miss Bernardine is
in, I am certain, working busily over her baskets. If you want to see
about baskets, she's the one to go to--top floor, right."

Sally made her way up the narrow, dingy stairs until she reached the top
floor. The door to the right stood open, and as Sally advanced she saw a
young girl turn quickly from a long pine table covered with branches of
willow, and look quickly up.

Sally Pendleton stood still, fairly rooted to the spot with astonishment
not unmingled with rage, for the girl upon whom she gazed was the most
gloriously beautiful creature she had ever beheld. She did not wonder
now that Jay Gardiner had given his heart to her.

In that one moment a wave of such furious hate possessed the soul of
Sally Pendleton that it was with the greatest difficulty she could
restrain herself from springing upon the unconscious young girl and
wrecking forever the fatal beauty which had captivated the heart of the
man who was her lover and was so soon to wed.

Sally had thrown back her veil, and was gazing at her rival with her
angry soul in her eyes.

Seeing the handsomely dressed young lady, Bernardine came quickly
forward with the sweet smile and graceful step habitual to her.

"You wish to see some one--my father, perhaps?" murmured Bernardine,
gently.

"_You_ are the person I wish to see," returned Sally, harshly--"you, and
no one else."

Bernardine looked at her wonderingly. The cold, hard voice s